with ideas, not with facts, and leads to conclusions
hypothetical rather than real; "Metaphysics" they even use as a by-word of
reproach; and Ethics they admit only on condition that it gives up
conscience as its scientific ground, and bases itself on tangible utility:
but as to Theology, they cannot deal with it, they cannot master it, and
so they simply outlaw it and ignore it. Catholicism, forsooth, "confines
the intellect," because it holds that God's intellect is greater than
theirs, and that what He has done, man cannot improve. And what in some
sort justifies them to themselves in this extravagance is the circumstance
that there is a religion close at their doors which, discarding so severe
a tone, has actually adopted their own principle of inquiry. Protestantism
treats Scripture just as they deal with Nature; it takes the sacred text
as a large collection of phenomena, from which, by an inductive process,
each individual Christian may arrive at just those religious conclusions
which approve themselves to his own judgment. It considers faith a mere
modification of reason, as being an acquiescence in certain probable
conclusions till better are found. Sympathy, then, if no other reason,
throws experimental philosophers into alliance with the enemies of
Catholicism.

5.

I have another consideration to add, not less important than any I have
hitherto adduced. The physical sciences, Astronomy, Chemistry, and the
rest, are doubtless engaged upon divine works, and cannot issue in untrue
religious conclusions. But at the same time it must be recollected that
Revelation has reference to circumstances which did not arise till after
the heavens and the earth were made. They were made before the
introduction of moral evil into the world: whereas the Catholic Church is
the instrument of a remedial dispensation to meet that introduction. No
wonder then that her teaching is simply distinct, though not divergent,
from the theology which Physical Science suggests to its followers. She
sets before us a number of attributes and acts on the part of the Divine
Being, for which the material and animal creation gives no scope; power,
wisdom, goodness are the burden of the physical world, but it does not and
could not speak of mercy, long-suffering, and the economy of human
redemption, and but partially of the moral law and moral goodness. "Sacred
Theology," says Lord Bacon, "must be drawn from the words and the oracles
of Go